Mobile phones, PDAs, laptop computers and other electronic devices often contain imaging devices such as cameras assembled as wafer level optical devices. The main components of a wafer level camera typically include a lens assembly of one or more stacked lenses, and an underlying image sensor. Wafer level cameras are manufactured by wafer level packaging technologies that include processes such as forming opto-wafers, aligning several layers of wafers, dicing, and finally packaging individual camera modules.
An opto-wafer contains a multitude of small individual lenses that are fabricated onto a substrate wafer, and may be manufactured with techniques such as using a master wafer, mold, or stamp, to reproduce lenses onto a substrate wafer. Each opto-wafer typically has multiple lenses and/or spacers; these wafers are cut during dicing such that each camera module typically inherits only one lens and/or spacers from each opto-wafer.